Bright lights are usually associated with big cities - yet things in the past few years have developed to the point that it seems like Malta is trying to emulate these big cities.

The night-time skies and ambience are, more and more, becoming lit up in blinding white lights.  The once customary yellow street lights are being replaced more and more by almost clinical, white, LED lights.

Violently bright modern showrooms and revamped modern petrol stations are cropping up on roadsides everywhere.  The newest tunnels are all equipped with what feels like the latest range of stadium floodlights rather than street lights.  Electronic billboards meanwhile are starting to seep onto the roadsides as well - piercing the night with blinding advertisements that forces drivers to squint as they go past.

This may seem like a first-world gripe, but it is yet another type of pollution that people are having to contend with.  Malta already gets a lot more than its fair share of air pollution and noise pollution, but the situation pertaining to light pollution is far from any better.

A major study in 2020 led by Astrophysicist Dr Joseph Caruana from the Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA) of the University of Malta found that the vast majority of the area of the Maltese Islands is heavily light polluted and the problem was getting worse with time.

The impacts of light pollution should not be under-estimated. 

First there is environmental impact.  Not only is the night sky brightness making the Milky Way visible for us from fewer places, but the increasingly brighter night skies have an impact on species which are more sensitive to light pollution.

For example, last year BirdLife Malta highlighted how excessive and inappropriate use of artificial light is disrupting the natural rhythms of seabirds like the Yelkouan Shearwater, Scopoli's Shearwater, and the European Storm-petrel, affecting their behaviour and, in some cases, putting entire colonies at risk.

Malta is a crucial location for these birds: Up to 10% of the world's Yelkouan Shearwater, which is classed as a vulnerable species, population breeds here.

Beyond this though, there is also the impact on people's health.  Multiple studies have linked light pollution to wellbeing problems. For instance, higher light emissions during the night-time has been associated with higher severity of depressive symptoms, with an American Medical Association study estimated that LED lamps have five times greater impact on sleep rhythms than conventional lamps.

Nighttime exposure to artificial light also suppresses melatonin production, which is needed to keep us healthy.  Melatonin is important for inducing good sleep, boosting the immune system and for the functioning of several key elements in the human body.

Malta has no major policy to speak of that actually deals with light pollution - but it's high time now that the government develops one which offers up a coherent vision for what we want and what we don't want.

We need to protect, first and foremost, Malta's few dark sky areas from excessive light pollution, but we also need to improve quality of life by legislating on what light should be used and what intensity it should be.

Is this to say that, for instance, we should do away with LED lights and go back to how we were 10 years ago?  Far from it.  But there is a need for some balance: electronic billboards should have their brightness capped, showrooms perhaps being told to switch off most lighting after a certain hour, warmer, yellow lights could be used in residential roads rather than white lights.

These are all ideas which can certainly be adopted and would improve people's day to day quality of life.